In the conventional manufacture of cigarettes, a tobacco filler rod is formed by moving an air-permeable collecting surface transverse to a vertically-moving thin shower of tobacco, collecting the tobacco thereon to build up a tobacco filler rod across the width of the shower, and wrapping a paper web around the tobacco filler rod. In general, two systems are in commercial use, one wherein the vertically-moving thin shower passes upwardly into engagement with the collecting tape and the other wherein the shower falls downwardly onto the collecting tape.
Upstream of the location of the vertically-moving thin shower a variety of structures and operations have been adopted to form a wide stream or carpet of tobacco from which the shower is formed. Cut tobacco is received by the cigarette-making machine onto a hopper and tobacco is manipulated within the machine by a variety of procedures to form the aforementioned wide carpet. In each of these procedures some form of metering of tobacco occurs, often combined with internal recycle of tobacco, which causes degradation of the tobacco and impairing of filling power. In addition, tobacco often is provided to the hopper in a somewhat unopened form as a result of the procedures used to convey tobacco from cutting operations to the cigarette-making machine, so that the metering operations often lead to further degradation of the tobacco.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,459,999, assigned to the assignee herein, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, there is described a cigarette-making operation wherein a reservoir of tobacco is metered and opened to form a tobacco feed stream from which a filler rod is directly formed.